Dying for vagina here....girls should not get periods.

aspro said:

I can't wait to start Binary Domain tonight. It's been a while since I've gone into a new IP completely cold, all I know about this game is what Foolz wrote in his review and has said in the podcast.

I think I liked it more than most, so prepare for disappointment?

So... how 'bout them NPD's eh?

This is interesting, a few days ago an analyst said Xenoblade was set to be in the top 3 sales charts for NPD but it doesn't show up in the charts.

Eurogamer says that because Xenoblade is retail-exclusive that excludes it from NPD?

This comes from a GlobalTestMarket survey, apparently. (It leaked Goldeneye in 2010).

Develop said:

Sony shares collapse across Japan and US

A 31-year low in Japan; 19-year low in the US; Sweeping cuts follow dismal FY


Sony Corporation’s share price has fallen its lowest position in a generation.


One day after the company reported a $6 billion loss for the financial year, Sony’s shares on the Tokyo Stock exchange hit a 31-year low, while its price on the New York Stock Exchange closed at the worst position since 1993.


A terrible trading day in Japan had Sony’s price fall by about 7 per cent to 1,135 Yen. In America it fell by 2 per cent to close at $15.37.


Currently, Apple’s share price is about forty times larger than Sony’s in the United States.

Sony, which was founded in 1946, projects it will make a profit in the current financial year. It blamed much of its dismal year on natural disasters and the strong Yen.

New CEO Kaz Hirai is preparing for a striking, globe-spanning company reorganisation that will result in the loss of about 10,000 jobs.


Develop understands that the PlayStation business will not be directly impacted by the job cuts.


Hirai has said Sony’s core strength is mobile, games and video/camera equipment.

The TV business, which has made losses eight years in a row, hangs in the balance.

But the actual Playstation Division has lost cash too:

CVG said:

PlayStation division loses $2.91 billion / £1.8 billion as annual PS3 sales decline

PSP and PS2 sales also dropped

Sony's Consumer Products and Services division - which houses its PlayStation, TV, video, digital imaging, PC and mobile businesses - suffered an operating loss of 229.8 billion yen (£1.78b) in the financial year ended March 31, 2012.


The business unit's sales also fell 18.5 percent year-on-year to 3,136.8 billion yen (£24.4b), with a decrease in the games business reflecting lower PS3 sales "due to a strategic price reduction and lower sales of PlayStation 2 due to platform migration".



Hardware sales were down across the board compared to the previous year. PS3 sales declined from 14.3 million to 13.9 million, PSP sales fell from 8 million to 6.8 million, and PS2 sales dropped from 6.4 million to 4.1 million. There was no mention of Vita, which was presumably lumped in with PSP.


PS3 software sales rose from 147.9 million to 156.6 million, PSP game sales dropped from 46.6 million to 32.2 million, and PS2 game sales fell from 16.4 million to 7.9 million units.


For the current financial year Sony expects combined PS3 and PS2 sales to decline from 18 million units to 16 million, and combined PSP and Vita sales to rise from 6.8 million units to 16 million. Packaged software sales are expected to be in line with the 196.7 million units reported for the financial year just ended.


Sony Corporation as a whole saw its annual net loss grow by 197.1 billion yen (£1.5 billion) to 456.7 billion yen (£3.6b), as sales fell 9.6 percent to 6,493.2 billion yen (£51b).


The numbers aren't pretty, and former PlayStation boss and recently appointed Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has admitted he faces his toughest challenge yet in attempting to turn around the company's fortunes.

So they expect to lose 2 million sales from home consoles but make up 9 million extra portable sales - presumably from Vita for this fiscal year.

Rumor: Crytek Beta tester checks out Wii U

Originally Posted by Sardello: Some posts ago I told something like "why do you keep talking about the Wii U power instead of focusing on games?"... well I'll try to give some new heat to the "Wii U raw power discussion".






Nothing new and nothing confirmed, just the words of an Italian beta tester that has just joint in Crytek. Take these words as facts, speculation, bullshit or whatever you want. I thinks these info are quite legit, but can't trust him 100%.






I'll put here below his original post in italian (provided on www.spaziogames.it forum) and then will summerize it in english.


- Crytek is NOT developing a game for Wii U, but they created a Crysis 3 level just to fully understand the console capabilities





- apparently he tried this level on the last DevKit available





- the game run on dx9 with a native 720p resolution, fxaa filter (it is impossible to use txaa), good framerate (30-35 stable fps), high quality texture (no pop up as in the Ps3/x360 game version due to the higher RAM amount), not fully implemented water shaders





- great particles effects (ambient occlusion on par with PC version)





- lighting effect on par with PC version (ultra setting)





- in the dev kit he tested, is not possible to "turn off" the Pad monitor, so that it always streams 480p contents





- the programming staff thinks that (they are not sure) toggling off the Pad monitor, the game could run on a 1080p native resolution






In other posts he is well impressed by the overall console power, but he hopes that in future dev kits there will be the opportunity to disable the Wii U pad in order to unleash the console full power.






He thinks Crytek will show this demo on E3 showfloor even if the game is not under development.







Original post





http://forum.spaziogames.it/board/showthread.php?t=324866&p=16074539&viewfull=1#post16074539

Just translated that, everything is apparently running at ultra version of either DX9 or DX10 (no DX11, so probably OpenGL 3.3 and not 4). Though that's with the game running essentially twice. Something they want to stop doing. Makes me wonder if they could get DX11 level if the system wasn't running games twice. They also aren't done with water shaders, which also tells me they aren't 100% so DX11 level shaders are still up in the air for now.

Italians, check it out and translate for us. This is a bit I got from babelfish:

"the quality of the textures is optimal and without POP up as in the versions for xbox 360 and ps3 because of the greater amount of top quality RAM (Ditto for the shaders), the water shaders cannot be estimated because incomplete. The particle effects are spectacular with ambient occlusion to the level of version PC. The light effects are to the level of version PC, reflection mapping and diffuse lighting shaders to the level of version PC ultra settings."

Fuck this is hard to translate I will try and clean up the mess I am looking at, I'm going to fix the grammar so it makes more sense:

"However the console is more than enough powerful than ps3 (in the true sense of the word) , try to imagine sony's PS3 with another screen with several times more resources hardware (several times the power?) and think of the final result"

"The true power of the wii U would only be seen if you could turn off the stream to the pad screen, but for the time being it is not technically possible - (with this devkit version?)


The generational difference of ram alone shows the difference, I have been convinced of this by the result in front of my very eyes."

"I have only said that it has effects ultra light and refractions to the level of version PC, not general the graphical section"

gamingeek said:

So they expect to lose 2 million sales from home consoles but make up 9 million extra portable sales - presumably from Vita for this fiscal year.

9 million portable sales? Is half of that expected to be PSP sales?

gamingeek said:

I think it proves that the 5 year lifecycle thing is true. Sure it's been slightly more than 5 years but the sales started dropping a while ago. There is fatigue in the market that is showing. All this 10 year lifecycle stuff is distracting - your console may be on the market for 10 years but you need to inject new hardware into the market before then.

Agreed.

I am about to have a breakfast beer or two and continue playing Binary Domain. Played the first chapter last night.

SEGA to Focus on Digital/ Mobile

Oh Sega..... ooooooooh Sega..... what the hell.

That does make me wonder how much longer the mobile gaming sector will continue to be a boon for developers. I've read multiple articles over the last month about how the digital marketplace is starting to get overcrowded and it's getting tougher for titles to distinguish themselves. The whole marketplace is turning into the Wii's library circa 2008.